Code 39 and unrecognised DVD drives

A friend of mine has XP, one HD a cd drive and a DVD drive. The system is not recognising the DVD or CD drives saying code 39. He has tried to rup XP setup but it simply cannot see the drives. Someone has said its re windows updates and its corrupted but can anyone confirm this, and also confirm the options we have. Rebuild seems best but not sure easiest way od going it.

Code 39
Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39)

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Reasons for this error include a driver that is not present; a binary file that is corrupted; a file I/O problem, or a driver that references an entry point in another binary file that could not be loaded.

Uninstall the driver, and then click Scan for hardware changes to reinstall or upgrade the driver.

On the General Properties tab of the device, click Troubleshoot to start the Troubleshooting Wizard.

Code 39
Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39)

Recommended resolution

Reasons for this error include a driver that is not present; a binary file that is corrupted; a file I/O problem, or a driver that references an entry point in another binary file that could not be loaded.

Uninstall the driver, and then click Scan for hardware changes to reinstall or upgrade the driver.

On the General Properties tab of the device, click Troubleshoot to start the Troubleshooting Wizard.

Google revealed the above.

Cheers gutys tried a whole load of stuff now, hard disk has taken a tumble so splatting and starting from scracth, turns out probably the problem was jumpers set incorrectly when guy put new drives in :-(